Previously, the American Cancer Society estimated that 1,479,350 new cancer cases would be diagnosed in the United States during 2009 of which 219,440 would be lung and bronchus related. Although only the second most prevalent type of cancer, behind prostate and breast cancer for men and women respectively, lung cancer is the most lethal accounting for a projected 159,390 deaths in the United States. Non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), a subset of lung cancer, encompasses a set of diseases with similar prognosis and treatments. The standard treatments for NSCLC include surgery, chemotherapy, radiation, laser and photodynamic therapy, all with various success rates depending on the stage of the cancer. Many current chemotherapy drugs also have excessive toxicity to healthy tissues and a limited ability to prevent metastases.
Despite recent advances in molecular characterization and targeted and adjuvant therapies, surgical resection remains the mainstay of curative treatment for NSCLC. Unfortunately, less than one third of NSCLC patients present with resectable disease. Neoadjuvant chemotherapy alone or with concurrent radiation is often used for stage IIIA NSCLC but is often tried in patients with stage IIIB and at times in patients with stage I or II disease.
After the initial diagnosis, more than half of the patients with localized lung cancer survive at least 5 years. But the general prognosis of NSCLC patients remains poor and unpredictable due to the high invasiveness potential of the disease. The National Cancer Institute assesses that results of standard treatment are generally poor with only a 15 percent 5-year survival rate for combined cancer stages.